The Secret Agent

This chillingly prophetic examination of terrorism by the author of Heart of Darkness is the literary precursor to the espionage thrillers of Graham Greene and John Le Carré.

Inspired by an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent portrays the world of late-nineteenth-century London, with its fatuous civil servants, corrupt police, and squalid underworld characters like Verloc, a pornographer acting as a government informant. Verloc’s assignment is to provoke th...